Morning Light

Both of these pieces were actually written several years ago and were found as we were doing some spring cleaning. Though completely unrelated when they were written, they seemed somehow to fit with each other when I was reading through them, so here they are together:

You should have seen the sunrise this morning. At this time of year I start for work at that "twilight" time when the sun isn't visible yet, but its effects are beginning to be apparent; when everything - even color - seems to be in an in-between state. This morning, practically the whole sky was covered with clouds that almost glowed a dark silver-gray. Here and there were small oddly shaped patches of deep black-blue sky. You know how something gains in beauty and worth the rarer it is? These patches of sky were like that. Because they were so few and far between, and because they provided such a sharp contrast with the indiscriminate color of the clouds, they were breathtakingly beautiful. Gradually, as the sun rose above the eastern horizon, the clouds broke up into a cumulonimbal archipelago, drifting in a sky the color of a Caribbean sea. By the time I got to work, there were no more clouds. Only the moon, hanging like a pale ghost of the sun, a prophecy of death for the newborn day.

THE WORD

The sun, like burnished copper, rose
and woke the day with searing prose.
No poetry of royal clouds
or subtlety of shadowed shrouds,
but rose and simply spoke the word
from which the sleeping world inferred
its day begun, and yawned and stretched,
and looked to God and gently blessed
the One whose Word, on that first day,
had set the earth upon its way.